According to private and federal lawsuits, the country’s biggest meat processors have been using a secretive data company to share sensitive information, enabling them to hike up prices and suppress wages for decades.
The revelation comes as meat prices have increased precipitously. Since 1985, the price of ground beef has increased by over 400 percent, far outpacing inflation. Meanwhile, meat-industry workers’ wages have largely stagnated.
Despite growing scrutiny and public outcry over algorithmic price-setting of consumer goods and services, critics say meatpackers are settling these collusion lawsuits without admitting guilt or paying substantial penalties, meaning they’re free to keep using the data analytics firm to fix prices and drive down workers’ earnings.
“[The meatpackers] win with their settlements, and never once do the packers have to admit guilt,” independent rancher Mike Callicrate told the Lever. “What’s happened is these law firms now have just gone around filing cases, knowing that they can take money out of the packer’s pocket, while the packer retains the ability to take it right out of the producer’s pocket and the consumer’s pocket.”
And while President Donald Trump has promised to crack down on price-fixing in agriculture, he’s financially benefited from some of the companies he’s criticized.
Agri Stats, a forty-year-old, Indiana-based data analytics firm, is named in four recent private lawsuits and a 2023 Department of Justice suit filed under former president Joe Biden, alleging anticompetitive practices by many of the company’s largest meat companies.
Agri Stats is named in four recent private lawsuits and a 2023 Department of Justice suit, alleging anticompetitive practices by many of the company’s largest meat companies.
That includes a price-fixing class action alleging that eighteen poultry giants, including Tyson and Perdue, utilized data from the company to suppress their workers’…
Auteur: Brock Hrehor
